


Should've Finished Med School

by GraceEliz



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Harvey and Bruce and Harleen are the Terrible Trio, Med School fic, University, this is inspired by Batman calling Harley his punishment for dropping out
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:33:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21552325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GraceEliz/pseuds/GraceEliz
Summary: Harleen Quinzel isn't a loner, but she doesn't have family. These two boys, the young billionaire and his slum-dog best friend, they are starting to feel like family.
Relationships: Harleen Quinzel & Bruce Wayne, Harvey Dent & Bruce Wayne, Harvey Dent & Bruce Wayne & Harleen Quinzel
Comments: 43
Kudos: 325
Collections: Harley Quinn





	1. Library

**Author's Note:**

> IT'S HEEEERRRRRRE!

University libraries are always more intimidating than they should be, in Bruce’s opinion, and it’s for that reason that he lets Harvey shove him in the rough direction of the med section with a roll of his eyes. Not one to be outdone Bruce rolls his back, but Harvey has long since established himself as the adult in this relationship (he’s older by like four months and Bruce is capable of looking after himself) so as expected ignores him completely. Hesitance to actually start a conversation won’t help him in the long or short run to make friends, which he needs because the two of them are on their own here, too far from home in Gotham for Alfred to have their backs. Screw up thy courage to the sticking place, he orders himself, and go ask if you can sit with that med-looking student over there. 

“Hey, I’m Bruce,” he says quietly, immediately cringing internally at himself. The girl – well, young woman, since she has to be at least 18 – smiles up from her note-taking. 

“Harleen, or Harley, or Harls, I guess, sorry, I’m rambling.”

“It’s fine.” Not cool, Bruce, get it together. He gestures at the seat opposite hers on the round table.” May I sit?”

“Of course, here, let me– there,” says Harleen, shuffling papers aside and stacking closed textbooks, “Sorry. Sit down.” She waves a pale hand towards the space now cleared, red nails catching the light. 

Make conversation, but not awkward conversation, Harvey had told him. Well. He can probably manage that. “You’re a second year?” he asks, recognising some of the books she has in her stack. 

She leans back in her seat, thankfully still smiling, pen tapping her cheek. The nails on this hand – her left – are black, with the fourth nail a bright silver. “Second year, heh. Where you from?”

“I know, I know. I’m American, but my...” Alfred, but how can he talk about Alfred and keep his identity from a woman who sounds like she’s from downtown Gotham? “Foster dad, I guess,” eugh, close enough, “is British so I have a lot of Britishisms and honestly I’ve never wrapped my head around universities anyway.” 

“Homeschooling does that to ya,” agrees Harleen shrewdly. She sounds very wise, in an older-student way. It’s a little intimidating, so he hurries to correct her assumption. 

“Oh no, I’m not home schooled. Not since I was thirteen.”

“Mm?”

Interest caught by that tidbit, Harleen fixes her sharp eyes on him again. He’s noticed she tends to rove her eyes around her surroundings more than most people would in the peace of a library. “I spent the last two years in England, though.” That’s true, yet he hasn’t given her enough clues for her to see he’s that particular Bruce from Gotham, whose parents have been dead this last eight years. He hasn’t yet said he’s Gothamite, but he can hear it in her voice and knows it won’t take long for her to hear the blur of the Bristol accent developing behind his teeth. Usually his accent is quite vague, even unnoticeable, but talking another Gothamite really draws it out of him. 

“Yeah, I thought I could hear that. You’re Gothamite, right?” Not quite vague enough, it seems, given the friendly curiosity in her voice. She’s patient, kindly, and now that she’s learned a little about him she seems happy to continue the conversation. 

“Yes, you too I hear.”

“Damn right I am,” she states proudly, “You should keep that nice polite English boy voice though; people like that.” There’s bitterness in her voice, not so much that Bruce can deduce why but enough for him to know that something must have happened to her fairly recently.  
Frowning at the advice, he assures her, “There’s nothing wrong with your-”

“Sure, I know that, but these guys are snobs.” Harleen flicks her pen into the air and catches a few times as she contemplates him. It takes more effort than it should not to shuffle under her gaze – it’s like being seen through by Alfred. They’d probably get on. “You stick with me, okay? I’ve got enough respect here that people leave me alone, and I’m always ready to demonstrate my many varied talents to the bullies.”

“I’ve got my brother, Harvey. Well, we’re not actual brothers, but we’ve been together for so long we might as well be.”

“Sweet. You should introduce us at lunch,” grins Harleen. Her teeth are straight, skin healthy if more weathered than most of the model-like women studying here would tolerate, and while Bruce isn’t usually this self-conscious he feels all his flaws – the scars, crooked nose, the way his teeth don’t quite align. She’ll know he’s a bit of a fighter just by looking at him but he doesn’t want that, he wants to make a good impression, he wants desperately for he and Harvey not to be alone here so far from all they’ve ever known. They don’t even have somewhere to properly stay yet.

Heaving a sigh, she turns back to her notes, twisting her hair up in one hand. Following her lead, he draws his thick workbooks out and sets about scribbling labels with his name, email, return information, so on and so forth, to tack into all of the resources a student accumulates. Colour-coding his timetables and rotas fills in the two hours or so until Harvey would come get him for lunch. Maybe if Harleen agrees they can eat together today. 

“Hey Rob,” Harv says, “Ready?”

“I didn’t hear you come over. This is Harleen,” says Bruce as he stuffs his books into his backpack. 

“Heya,” she waves with a grin. “You guys have somewhere to eat?”

Bruce glances at his friend. They don’t really, they have no other friends at all – never mind in this uni. “Not as such.”

“Come on, I’ll look after y’all,” she says as she stands. She’s quite tall, about Harvey’s height or maybe a bit more, but her black heeled boots make her tower on eye level with Bruce. Her whole ensemble gets more chaotic every time she reveals a new detail. 

They trail side by side after her, through the courtyards and passages and old stone arches. It feels a little like home – not enough to be homesick, but architecturally reminiscent of the old streets and homes of Gotham in a manner that is more like saying “oh sweet same carpet” to a friends than feeling the soul-crushing aloneness. An optimistic frat boy whistles at Harleen, who flicks a round stone from the path his way with a sharp kick from the toe of her boot. Bruce gasps in awe as it nails the catcaller between the eyes without leaving a scratch. His new idol barely grins at the silence falling over the frat boys. He’s definitely got a case of hero worship now – Harvey has the manic grin which means he’s hatching one of his madcap schemes.


	2. Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have nothing to say for myself but that this is not the sort of AU that lends itself to easy writing, and I now have literally no more written down. Will there be a part three? Who knows.  
> I don't know who is responsible for Harvey being called Teeth. I know there's some funny story attached.

Bruce gets up the stairs first, all nine floors of them, reaching their new front door when Harleen is on the seventh floor and Harvey even lower than that. Close to buzzing in excitement at finally being out of their one room bedsit and in an apartment, he leans over the bannisters. “Come on,” he yells, “Teeth, you are not that old.”

“It’s okay for you two,” wheezes Harvey in response, “You’re fit.”

Harleen leaps the last few stairs, patting at her coat pocket for the keys. The door sticks at the top, meaning Bruce has to squeeze beside her in the cramped corridor to reach up shove at the door-jamb, and both he and Harls stumble over the old curled welcome mat lurking just inside the ledge of the door. Already the flat seems to be a health and safety nightmare.

“This place is tiny.” They stand and stare around them, slowly turning in a circle to truly take it in. The walls don’t look like they’re going to collapse, at least.  
This is how Harvey finds them, and he rolls his eyes dramatically. “We both know it’s fine, even for all three of us.” He raises a dubious eyebrow at the two tiny bedrooms visible through unclosed fire doors. “Hey, looks like we’re sharing.”

“You snore!”

Harls glares over from where she’s crouched in front of the tiny fridge, which has suspicious grey fuzz lining the seals. At least the plug looks safe to use. “These walls are pathetic, if you snore you can sleep on the roof.”

“I do not snore.”

“You do,” assures Bruce, “I’ve lived with you more than long enough to know you snore.”

“Well now it’s your problem mate,” says Harvey sunnily, “Suck it up Robbie-boy.”

Harls kicks her boot at the freezer dubiously. “Reckon we can use Rob’s allowance to get a new one of these? Also. The oven. I refuse to cook in that.”

Harvey scrapes his finger down the inside of the oven door, lips twisting in distaste. “That’s genuinely disgusting, and I come from the Narrows.” 

“You come from the Narrows?”

He grins at her, but says nothing more, leaning in to check the heating element.

“I think we need a few boxes of bleach,” says Bruce from the smaller bedroom. “Some wood too, maybe? I can borrow some tools from Mick on engineering.”

One of her nails cracks loudly, and she swears colourfully. It was the best one too, orange to pink sunset-hues that took her months to perfect. “How did you make a friend, anyway?” she asks. Bruce shrugs; she can’t see much of him, but she recognises that life of his growing shoulders. There’s a non-answer if ever I saw one, she thinks. “Please tell me you didn’t get in a fight.”

Bruce keeps silent, leaving the bedroom and turning to the windows, knocking his knuckles against the wood. “Surprisingly, not rotten.”

“Answer the question, Bruce,” orders Harvey quietly, eyes sharp and shrewd and knowing. This is the hard bit, knows Harls, making Bruce admit to fighting and finding trouble where he really shouldn’t be able to. 

She stands up, brushing her hair out of her face before she notices the dirt on her hands and grimaces at the thought of it in her white hair. Soon as the shower is fixed, she’s redoing her hair. Pink again, maybe. Or blue and red? Half and half, that would be nice. “Bruce, you’re great, really, and I love you, but please stop fighting.”

He turns, pointing to himself dramatically. “Me, fight? I would never,” he swears, lip twitching.

Her mock-glare lasts as long as Harvey’s. “And I’ve never been in one either,” teases Harls, flicking blue nails in his direction. “You’re a moron, Bruce.”

**Author's Note:**

> Leave a review and tell me what you want to see from these three! Updates will be irregular and probably non-linear.


End file.
